I was proud of myself for being able to recount this story with no overt displays of emotion. I had practised. It had taken more than two years, but it finally didn’t feel like I had a boulder pressing on my chest.
“What’s weirdly helped,” I said – and also hurt – I omitted, “was that no one knew about us. About me. Bar my folks, and you, there wasn’t anyone to tell, or to ask if I was okay.”
I hadn’t had to endure the pitying looks from people who knew, I didn’t have a group of mutual friends checking in with me.
“I did it all on my own.” I said, quietly, as much in realisation as fact.
Becka reached for my hand, silently offering support for something I’d never voiced before – just how fucking hard that had been.
Because no one had known, it had felt like I was mourning something no one else knew existed.
“Goddammit,” I muttered, wiping away an errant tear. “I was doing so well.”
“Hey,” Becka shook my hand, “you’re allowed to feel it. Sometimes you have to.”
“It’s so stupid,” I said. “In the scheme of things, my silent breakup was the least consequential casualty 2020.”
“Grief isn’t a competition,” Becka said firmly. “We all lost something. We all came out the other end a little beat up. No onehas the monopoly on sadness, there’s more than enough to go around.”
She took my now empty mug and put it down on the table, next to hers.
I sniffled, but nodded, and because apparently the dam was open, I told her about his public relationship with Lee Hyejin, and how that had felt. How I had been erased, not just as the mystery girlfriend, but from all the instances where I could have been identified. She had taken my place in all our hidden histories.
I’d been wiped away.
Becka listened intently, and quietly. Her eyes scrutinised me with an almost uncomfortable level of attention, and then because she was looking at me like that, I continued and told her about Taeyang at Glastonbury, and how I’d had this same conversation with him. I talked for so long that eventually, my words just sort of… ran out.
Becka was silent, just looking at me like I was a book she was reading, and I squirmed under her attention.
“I hate to say it,” she said with a sigh, looking away for a moment and biting her lip. “But I agree.”
My brows pulled together. “With what?”
“With him, the sun idol.” She gestured vaguely, and I followed the motion of her hand with my eyes like it might materialise the answer.
“The sun… Oh! Sol, you mean Tae?” I snorted, raising a hand to cover my mouth as I laughed at her.
Becka just slapped at my knee, ineffectually.
“You knew who I meant. Anyway, him – I agree with him.”
My laughter trickled off. “About which part?”
“The part where it doesn’t make sense. Before, I kind of got it. Don’t take this the wrong way-
“About to, but go on-”
“-but a long distance relationship is serious, fucking work. When you broke up, I–I kinda wasn’t surprised. Stop with the eyes!” She pointed a finger at me.
“These are just my eyes!” I protested.
“No, those are the sad eyes, stop that. Anyway, what I meant was, your lives were so different that I always wondered how that would work if you weren’t, y’know, in the trenches together.”
“In the trenches?” I raised an eyebrow.
“In the trenches.” She nodded firmly. “Doing life together, you and him, against the world, fighting the good fight.”
I sighed, rubbing a finger across my forehead. “Mixed metaphors, but I’ll allow it.”
